Chapter 3
“What does Vanessa being back have to do with that folder?”
Ryan looked at me.
“I saw her last week.”
Something cold moved through me.
“You saw her.”
“Yes.”
“Once?”
He hesitated.
That was my answer.
I glanced at the black folder.
Then back at him.
“Are you having an affair?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
Too quickly.
He exhaled.
“Not physically.”
It was astonishing how much pain two extra words could create.
I felt my thumb touch the edge of my purse.
The ultrasound envelope was right there.
“Then what are you telling me?”
Ryan looked directly at me.
“I’m telling you Vanessa came back to New York because she wants to stay.”
I waited.
“And?”
“And we talked.”
“About what?”
“Us.”
I almost laughed.
“There is no ‘us.’ You’re married to me.”
His jaw tightened.
“Natalie.”
“No. Say it clearly.”
He leaned back.
For the first time that morning, his composure shifted.
“Vanessa and I ended badly. There were circumstances neither of us handled correctly. I spent years believing that part of my life was finished.”
“And then she came back.”
“Yes.”
“And suddenly your wife became a circumstance?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you’re doing.”
His eyes dropped briefly to the folder.
“I owe it to myself to know whether what Vanessa and I had can still be something.”
I stared at the man I had slept beside the night before.
He had kissed my shoulder that morning when he left the bedroom.
I had assumed he was heading to work.
He had already arranged my divorce.
My palm moved instinctively toward my stomach.
Nothing showed yet.
I was only nine weeks pregnant.
Three babies existed inside me, and the man who had helped create them was sitting six feet away calmly explaining why another woman deserved another chance.
I whispered, “Are you asking me for a divorce?”
Ryan’s expression became harder.
“I’m not asking.”
There are sentences that close doors.
That one locked something inside me.
I looked down.
The first page carried both our names.
Ryan Whitmore.
Natalie Whitmore.
Three years of marriage compressed into neatly spaced paragraphs.
There was a settlement agreement.
A confidentiality clause.
Property division.
Numbers large enough to make most people dizzy.
My vision blurred anyway.
Ryan mistook the reason.
“You’ll be protected financially.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“The settlement is generous.”
I almost asked him how generous a settlement had to be before a wife stopped remembering anniversaries.